The Art of Living in Community...
Thinking about Education, School, Teaching and Learning. What ideas do we have about the future and how do these inform our actions in the present?
How might we engage, act and think differently?
“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Thinking is not optional.

Why title a blog post 'thinking is not optional?'I mean, many of us are educators and we get paid to think. Don't we? Do we?I attended #educampwelly yesterday. Yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of being in conversations with educators from around Wellington. We were talking about Game Based Learning. There was agreement amongst some teachers, that it is the school time table that stops them from being able to engage with Game Design in the classroom.I've been thinking a lot about this. I know it's a reality - many of us in classrooms are shadowed by an internal voice that whispers "so little time - so much to do". However, I realise I'm tired of this response.Our role as educators is to think. This is not optional.In New Zealand we are working with an outstanding future focussed curriculum document. Are we actually reading this document?Game Based Learning, Game Design is simply another vehicle for us to think, do and act differently in our classrooms. It is our task to think and to think hard.Future focussed teaching is about thinking - perhaps working with another teachers recipe, but not using exact quantities. - We are not cooks. We are chefs.We are going for a slow cook. Ideas take time. Thinking 'how' with our time table takes time. However it is possible. We must think and we must think together.I am reminded of Robert Kegan's work. He talks about the process required regarding that which we are subject to - we need to make object. Is it possible this is a key skill towards developing conditions for change?“Successfully functioning in a society with diverse values, traditions and lifestyles requires us to have a relationship to our own reactions rather than be captive of them. To resist our tendencies to make right or true, that which is nearly familiar, and wrong or false, that which is only strange.” ― Robert Kegan“At the simplest level, any particular expression of the immunity to change provides us a picture of how we are systematically working against the very goal we genuinely want to achieve.” ― Robert Kegan, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization

When I think about Education I think about verbs like warmth of Interaction, commoning and nod-ing (if such a word exists!)
"Node. The point of rest between two wave motions of a vibrating string etc."
The New Oxford Companionship to Music
Vol 2 K-Z
Denis Arnold 1983
Oxford University Press